Bring Oceanic Servers to Australia

I'm posting this more directly towards any Blizzard personnel who will read it, since there aren't suggestion forums anymore. Would appreciate any other input though. I've had this discussion with many people on many places, but mostly been flamed down, so forgive me if I sound a little arrogant in my argument - I'm expecting trolls. Anyway - ONWARD!

I know this wouldn’t be an issue most American companies would even consider – I mean, who gives a damn about Australia, they’re tucked all the way down there, and they barely even contribute to the ‘gaming’ community. They’re just that older brother who sends you nice presents, but you can never be bothered to visit them because they’re too expensive.

If you’re bad with metaphors, the ‘presents’ I’m referring to is the money that Aussie and NZ subscribers give to Blizzard. The ‘visit’ is the oceanic servers that Blizzard have yet to actually give us.

Yes, there ARE Oceanic servers, but they’re hosted in LA. Which is basically Blizzard hanging a big mosquito lamp and saying “HEY! AUSSIES! YOU SHOULD ALL HANG OUT HERE SO IT’S LESS CONFUSING FOR EVERYONE!”.

Every Oceanic player still has to connect to America, which means 200-250 ms is about the most decent ping you’ll ever get in Australia (Oh, I’ll nab this troll real quick - unless you play WoW in a government building such as a university, but then that’s just a great use of taxpayer dollars, isn’t it?). This is the main reason why there aren’t many, if any, competitive oceanic guilds. In America, fire drops on you, you move out of it, good job. In Australia, fire drops on you, you move out of it, you still take 1-2 ticks of damage because of the latency. The gear has got to get to a certain point before it can carry the extra fire ticks we always have to take, so the progression is several weeks behind.

I don’t know if it’s just too much effort for little gain, or the marketers just can’t see it as a strategic move, but I’ll put some constructive thoughts (admittedly this intro has seemed a bit trolly, but I think I’m allowed it after putting up with 200-400 ms for the last 4 years.)

How would Oceanic Servers be a worthwhile business move?

A way to make money out of Oceanic servers would be to add in another subscription fee option – An extra 5 dollars a month onto your subscription for access to the Australian Oceanic servers (or even just 1 server, and add more if it gets too many people, and so on). This way, the casuals who don’t care about their latency can stay on the American-hosted Oceanic servers, and still be with Australians, whereas the people who want the lower latency can pay the extra 5 dollars.

As for profit on Blizzards behalf, I’m not sure on exact figures, but WoW has 11 million subscribers? It’s safe to assume that at least 500 000-700 000 of those are subscribers from the Oceanic area. Let’s assume that 200 000 want to pay for these lower latency servers. 200 000 x 5 = 1 000 000. An extra million a month. 12 million a year, take off the expenses of the infrastructure and the hosting at a data centre (and don’t try to tell me hosting costs more than that, I’ve worked in a data centre).

It could also serve to be a bigger selling point in the Australian market – So very few games actually support Australian servers, why not be one of those few?

Would subscribers pay for it?

Now, you might think, “Why would subscribers spend that extra 5 dollars to play the game?” My answer is… They already do. Ping lowering services such as WoWtunnels, and Lowerping, are already there. BUT, these services really don’t do much, and aren’t designed to lower a 25man raid ping to American standard. A quick look at Lowerping shows they charge $8 dollars a month - So paying 5 dollars extra on a subscription would be cheaper than a ping lowering service.

Personally, as an almost 4 year subscriber, I'd pay double the current fee if I could have the relief of pressing a button and watching it go off without any waiting.

Well, thanks for reading. I would love to hear some feedback, especially from a GM, explaining Oceanic servers from Blizzards standpoint.

To be honest I'm doubting this will get any noise. I don't think Blizzard care enough to read a half educated opinion on this subject. Honestly, I only did this out of disappointment. Up until 4.2 I just sort accepted the problem that I lagged, at least I could play.

But since 4.2 connection issues have just been so terrible that it's a chore to log in. I really wish it was different - I love the crap out of WoW. The lore, the simple gameplay combined with challenging content. I'm sad to unsub, but until things lift, I'm over it.

Add to that a blanket ban on ALL American IP's and ISP's. They can have their servers, they can stay on them and stay off ours, I am sick of these players asking me why I am playing on an American server.

/Facepalm

The forum people keep telling us we don't matter, that we are "35 players down there in kangarooland"...so make the server restricted to Australians only.

Even if they Moved a realm to the Oceanic Region, it would also subsequently bring over all the Players in China/Japan/Indonesia who speak english and there would be more Profit, I'm fed up with a constant 2.6k ms when my American friends get a solid 50ms all day, I hate it

I have tried to contact blizzard multiple times about this, but they simply don't care about us.

Which I find hard to believe since it will bring them profit, what's the issue? I would be happy with a well described reason on why this isn't possible, because all we have is speculation on the matter, I'm sure most of you would be satisfied if they could produce and good reason.

I don't mind the latency so much but grow tired of all the trolls and bots on alot of our servers. We get to put up with all the US insomiacs and drunks on our servers at our prime time. I have moved servers a number of times to get away from them. Now i limit my game time to when there is less of them.

But since 4.2 connection issues have just been so terrible that it's a chore to log in. I really wish it was different - I love the crap out of WoW. The lore, the simple gameplay combined with challenging content. I'm sad to unsub, but until things lift, I'm over it.

I have had the same issues. Since 4.2 WoW is rather painful to play due to the lag.